A film on the paraphernalia of death was talked about — perhaps not for him, John eventually decided, try Philip Larkin. I did, and Larkin shuddered with horror.

A very good idea was for a film on the architecture of New York. A researcher produced a superb treatment, which John loved. But Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, whom he called "Feeble" because she wasn't, intervened, saying that the project would be too tiring for him, so it came to nothing. Instead, replacing the Laureate by his beloved daughter, we made two films with Candida Lycett Green. The first of them, The Front Garden, was John's own suggestion. The result gave him immense pleasure.

A few years later, in May 1984, working in Venice on a series about Italians, I came back one evening to the Hotel La Fenice et Des Artistes to find a scrappy hand-written note. Just four words: "Signor Betjeman è morto."

Laureate Productions could be said to have made one final documentary, 17 years later, but here John was only on archive, and in the memory of his friends. The Last Laugh, the film was called, and the last words of it were spoken by John Drummond:

Oh his laugh. I mean as we sit here talking now I can hear his laughter, I can see that wicked grin, that squashed old pork pie hat on his head, glasses on the end of his nose, and that absolute sort of riotous laughter which starts and builds and builds and builds, and a sort of gurgling chuckle and all the rest of it. And then, a sort of expression of despair, as if the world can't always be laughter.